Region provides a strong chemical reaction to lead way

Overall, the UK chemical sector is one of the largest in the world with an 8.2 per cent global market share and it accounts for over 1.5 per cent of the UK’s GDP employing 214,000 people.

I only hope the Government will protect this sector in the same way as it protects financial services. The Royal Society of Chemistry hails Yorkshire as the UK’s major chemical cluster area. In the region we have over 450 chemical companies with a well-developed supply chain of supporting industries. The so-called White Rose Universities, York, Sheffield and Leeds, are creating and fostering chemical science spinouts.

The region is also equally well placed for pharmaceutical companies hosting not only major plants for global players but also many research organisations.

Global brands include Novartis, BP, Syngenta, Croda, ConocoPhillips, Reckitt Benckiser, Dupont, Covenance and Thornton & Ross have plants in Yorkshire. Not only do these companies produce for the UK market but they are major exporters.

As an example, Croda was transformed by the acquisition of Uniqema a few years into one of the three leading global players in the chemical consumer care market.

Mike Humphrey, CEO of Croda and Yorkshire businessman of the year, retires at the end of the year and is replaced by a safe pair of hands in Steve Foots a man with bags of experience. Privately owned Thornton & Ross has over the counter products such as Hedrin and Covonia brands, the envy of its rivals. These companies have faced the “financial” recession by adopting lean manufacturing processes, controlling working capital and with interest rates low have degeared and made strategic long-term capital commitments in innovation which bodes well for the long-term future of the Yorkshire and Humber cluster. Margins remain tight and remaining competitive is key.

It might not be glamorous to be a pharmaceutical or chemical company but for Yorkshire it is a strong cluster, a cluster that needs support and protection from over regulation so as to maintain the competitive edge that has been built up through lean initiatives and constant R&D developments over the last 20 years.

It is no accident with strong medical research universities such as Leeds that late stage clinical trials companies have centred themselves around Yorkshire. Yorkshire is now seeing strong growth in a number of companies linked to functional foods and natural products such as Seven Seas and Essential Nutrition, all capable of supporting the new nutracetical emerging markets which will only grow as the diabetes curse spreads through the West.

Fashionable locations such as Castleford, Huddersfield and Hull employ large numbers of highly skilled and motivated staff and the support services around those locations support further employment around the Yorkshire area.

Yorkshire should be proud of its chemical and pharmaceutical heritage.